Some days back I visited the main hospital in
Srinagar, the SMHS hospital that sits in the jumbled center of this mangled
city. Inside the hospital the scenes resembled an aftermath of a war, where
sufferings and ordeals formed a seemingly endless queue. I, along with my
friend (a senior doctor) was coordinating the visit of specialists from
mainland India for critical Ophthalmological surgical intervention for victims
hit by pellets. For all the guts, I may have or may not have gathered from
living decades of conflict in Kashmir, I could not stay for long in the
inpatient area. You looked at the closed bandaged eyes, or the pierced the
blood shot attempting to open yet closed eyes, or the shut and dark eyelids
those were dotted with countless holes, and you would want to breakdown in a
lonely corner, somewhere in a dark seclusion where none could see my
helplessness. Withdrew hurriedly from what I could not bear to witness, did not
want to believe and wished had never happened in the first place. I retreated
to a runaway that knew a denial was not to be.

Back home the images of the hospital came flashing in
front of my eyes, before a ‘black out evening’ (when we are supposed to shut
out all lights in Kashmir as a mark of protest) and frighteningly sleepless
nights. A horrendous disquietude prevailed all along. The feeling of infirmity
pushed me to try how it would feel for these kids to be in a permanent dark,
and the next day morning I tied a cloth on my eyes, pretending to be blind. The
pretending could not last for more than two hours, during which I banged on two
doors hitting my head once, shattered a glass of water, slipped on the lobby
steps, while my books, my papers and my laptop pretended to not know me
anymore. Behind the tied cloth on my eyes, was a fearsome darkness with no end,
an eclipse where no planets moved, where the night knew no borders. Then I thought
about the kids in the hospital, with pierced and shuteyes, shuddered at the
unspeakably horrendous and petrifyingly looming darkness. And I sunk again in a
saddening recluse !

Main kis ke hath pe apna lahu talash karun,

Tamam sheher (Mulk) ne pehnay hue hain dastaanay.

While there seem no respite in the ‘dark hours’ in
Kashmir, our enforced darkness remains willfully invisible to mainland India,
where a major part of its ‘blaringly noise emitting’ media and political
enterprises are busy pushing Kashmir further to the margins, measuring
Kashmiris by their scale of‘collective
conscience’. In such manufactured debates and rhetoric, that is only aimed to
harden the common mindset in India and take it further away from facts, the truth
is concealed and layers of deceptive falsity are added under the premise of
‘national interest’.

In this manufactured rhetoric, where anchors and
politicians in India have taken the task of ‘Posturing and Pontification’, too
seriously, the larger question remains unanswered. Has this vile rhetoric actually
helped the nation or harmed it? And does this rhetoric have any power to
actually change the truth on Kashmir or to even alter it? Has vilifying
Kashmiris day in and day out not actually pushed them further to the margins,
to a point of no return?

That the Kashmir issue exists as a political conflict for
decades, that consumed thousands of innocent lives is undeniable. And the
refusal to accept this fact as willful blindness on Kashmir is lamentable.

Ironically silence of mainland India comes from political
calculations in other states of India, where any talk on Kashmir is treated as
anti-national. But such silence can’t ensure closure of factuality for long. The
‘pressure cooker’ in Kashmir will only keep simmering, till the need for a
resolution dawns on them. The Indian political state, and the media that sides
with these political powerhouses, are only doing the greatest disservice to the
idea of India, as a nation, by confiscating the truth and pretending that all
is well, facts being contrary to that. While the Kashmir issue is not any easy
puzzle to solve, with so may claimants and stakeholders, an initiative has to
be made somewhere. We have already lost
two generations in Kashmir to a bloody conflict, while the third generation
that grew amidst the violent upheaval under the shadow of guns, crackdowns,
humiliations, deaths and denial has been hardened by the contretemps of this
mayhem.Taking them on board may not be
easy but there is no other option, for their unaddressed anger will only
cascade into a harder stance for coming generations, making peace more elusive
for Kashmir.

Given
the complexity of the Kashmir issue, no abstract papers can work. But an honest
initiative at resolution has to be made. And
that initiative will not and cannot flow from the barrel of the gun, for we
have seen too many wars and tragedies in Kashmir for decades. That initiative
will have to start from realization of the issue and acceptance of the need of
a resolution. New Delhi, Islamabad and Srinagar will someday, one day have to
talk, but how much innocent blood that realization seeks, only providence
knows.

Till that realization dawns on these powers, may Allah
save the kids of Kashmir and may Allah restore the sight of the willful blind
outside Kashmir.